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Republicans have their futures invested, not only in offshore and unnumbered Swiss bank accounts, but on the failure of President Obama to turn the economy around. When, in heavens’ name, will this torrent of bad tidings cease?
Five straight months, now! For the fifth month in a row, the unemployment rate has dropped! How, in God’s name, is Mitt Romney supposed to keep saying, with a straight face that President Obama’s policies are making things worse?
The Republicans need Obama to fail and fail real hard! They need to show themselves as American’s only salvation, riding to the rescue on a big white (yes, white) horse to save America from the communist, socialist, marxist, fascist, villainous, reckless, Kenyan Indonesian economic policies of this man whose first words to his Communist mother were allgedly “death to America.”
That’s the only reason Obama is improving the economy. To fool you into thinking he cares about you. It’s the same reason former National Rifle Association President Wayne LaPierre gave last September for Obama not pushing gun control. It’s all a massive conspiracyso he can come get your guns in the second term!
http://deepbrainmedia.com/2012/02/04/will-this-torrent-of-bad-news-for-republicans-never-cease/Republicans have their futures invested, not only in offshore and unnumbered Swiss... more
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Employment department had revealed figures which shows, that this year there was found nearly 10 Lac job opportunities in US. Not to say but private sectors had supported too much.
Looking from my point of view, in 2009 year, the rate of Unemployment was reached over 10.1%.There found opportunities in transport, manufacturing and health sectors.
For more details let's move to...
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/11248864-unemployment-rate-reached-at-85
Thanks.Employment department had revealed figures which shows, that this year there was found... more
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By Andrew Jones
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Despite inheriting a recession, two wars and a myriad of other problems, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) doesn’t think President Barack Obama’s job is harder than his.
Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Tuesday morning, Christie continued his support for Mitt Romney in the GOP presidential race. But he decided to spend more time criticizing Obama, especially over his Teddy Roosevelt speech a few weeks ago.
“I’ve had to face much tougher things in New Jersey from a political perspective than he has,” he said. “I have a state that’s overwhelming Democratic, I have a legislator that’s overwhelming Democratic. Yet we accomplished the things I mentioned before, plus balancing two budgets without raising taxes.”
Despite Christie’s self-appraising, the unemployment rate in New Jersey under him is at 9.4%, higher than the national average and 15th highest overall nationwide.
Critics allege that a key factor in aggravating the state’s jobless rate is Christie’s refusal to take up several jobs measures proposed by New Jersey Democrats. He’s instead choosen to reduce revenues through tax cuts, roll back public health and safety regulations and fire public workers
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/20/christie-my-job-is-tougher-than-obamas/.
WATCH: Video from MSNBC, which was broadcast on December 20, 2011.
He’s instead choosen to reduce revenues through tax cuts, roll back public health and safety regulations and fire public workers
"Sheeesh, what a Guy, he's got my Vote!!! NOT!!!"By Andrew Jones
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Despite inheriting a recession, two... more
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Yesterday, I met a small-framed man with a red bandanna tied around his shaggy gray hair. His skin was tanned to leather. He fit the part of old hippie, and he slightly resembled Charles Manson, which is maybe why I trusted him right away.
"Hey, chief!" he said. I was on my way into Bristol Farms to get coffee. "How are you today?" I said I was fine and asked how he was. "I could use fifty cents," he said, "or hell, I'd be happy to get a dollar." I couldn't resist giving him a buck. The demand wasn't strenuous.
I pulled out one dollar and wondered if I should be giving him more. He thanked me, I walked away. Suddenly, "Hey you!" he shouted. I turned, a little concerned why he was shouting at me. Did he want another dollar? Dear Jesus, let this guy leave me alone. "Hey, thank you so much, brother," he called. He stared into my eyes. He was thankful.
The most unworthy Americans: they NYPD's continued brutality
I went inside, bought my coffee, browsed the fresh fruits and vegetables section, and then left. He was standing outside. Shit, I thought, here we go again. I looked him in the eyes, expecting him to ask for more. He stared at me too, and we didn't say anything for one awkward moment. A couple other people walked by, but I was hardly paying attention. I was nervous about what he was going to say, or not say.
The old homeless hippie reached out a fist, and we bumped knuckles. His eyes intensely watched me. "Thank you," he said again, "I love you, brother." And that was all. I walked away feeling like I should have bought him coffee, even a meal, whatever he needed. Fuck it that I'm just a student and taking on a lot of debt. I've never seen anyone so sincerely grateful for one dollar. I had clean clothes, a backpack, a car. He didn't seem to have much more than the dirty clothes he was wearing.
And that's the issue. I keep giving out my student loan money to the homeless and destitute wandering the streets of Los Angeles. I suspect a lot of people with very little give to those with even less. We know how easily we could be them, how easily we could be out of work, out of our apartments, and on the streets. I don't need a wild imagination to picture myself in serious financial difficulty. It's not like there are any new jobs being created.
Read the rest:
http://deardirtyamerica.blogspot.com/2011/10/thoroughness-of-good-whore-buying-into.htmlYesterday, I met a small-framed man with a red bandanna tied around his shaggy gray... more
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What follows are 11 unemployment details that mass media underreports or ignores completely. This list will not be recalled fondly as a top-10 list of best quarterbacks or favorite vacation retreats would, but it’s where the REAL unemployment crisis is exposed.What follows are 11 unemployment details that mass media underreports or ignores... more
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The global restaurant chain said it plans to hire as many as 50,000 new U.S. employees -- ranging from restaurant crew to managers -- on April 19. The move would increase the hamburger company's U.S. workforce by 7.7 percent to 700,000, but such hiring is typical in the lead up to the busy summer months.
"Our total hires are similar to past years, but the goal of hiring 50,000 people in one day across the U.S. is unique," McDonald's spokeswoman Ashlee Yingling told Reuters.
The April hiring event is preparation for the busy summer months. "But these are not just seasonal jobs. It's a mix of permanent and temporary jobs," Yingling said.
She added that McDonald's hourly employees typically make more than minimum wage, often more than $8 per hour.The global restaurant chain said it plans to hire as many as 50,000 new U.S. employees... more
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It seems that the United States is still struggling to recover from the economic slowdown. Jobs data for the month of January released this month has come out with disappointing figures. Only 36000 people got a job last month, which experts say is far less than what had been expected.It seems that the United States is still struggling to recover from the economic... more
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Employers added fewer jobs than forecast in November and the unemployment rate unexpectedly rose, underscoring the Federal Reserve’s decision to pump more money into the economy to spur growth.
Payrolls increased 39,000, less than the most pessimistic projection of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, after a revised 172,000 increase the prior month, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The jobless rate rose to 9.8 percent, the highest since April, while hours worked and earnings stagnated.
Stocks declined and Treasury securities jumped as the report showed payrolls aren’t growing fast enough to reduce the jobless rate, one reason why Fed policy makers announced a new round of monetary stimulus. More jobs are needed to sustain the holiday-season gains in consumer spending, the biggest part of the economy, into the new year.
“The labor market is not turning around, and that’s key to the overall recovery,” said David Semmens, a U.S. economist at Standard Chartered Bank in New York. “Anyone who feels that the Fed perhaps acted too prematurely is definitely going to have to eat their words.”
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index dropped 0.3 percent to 1,217.45 at 9:36 a.m. in New York. The benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose, pushing down the yield to 2.93 percent from 2.99 percent late yesterday.
Private Payrolls
Private payrolls that exclude government agencies also gained less than forecast, rising by 50,000 in November. Economists projected a 160,000 gain, the survey showed.
The unemployment rate was forecast to hold at 9.6 percent, according to the median prediction of 83 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Estimates ranged from 9.4 percent to 9.7 percent.
Manufacturers cut jobs for a fourth straight month, payrolls dropped at construction companies and government employment declined.
Overall payrolls were forecast to climb by 150,000, according to the survey median, with estimates ranging from 75,000 to 200,000. The October figure was revised up from an initially reported gain of 151,000.
Manufacturing payrolls dropped by 13,000 in November, the most in three months. Economists had projected an increase of 5,000.
Construction Companies
Employment at service-providers increased 54,000. The number of temporary workers rose 39,500. Construction companies subtracted 5,000 workers and retailers let go 28,100 workers.
Financial firms cut 9,000 workers. Boston-based State Street Corp., the third-largest custody bank, on Nov. 30 said it will cut 1,400 jobs, or about 5 percent of its workforce, to reduce costs as interest rates near zero erode profit.
“Amid the current challenging economic conditions, we will continue to improve our operating environment in the short-term while ensuring that we have the right structure in place for long-term growth,” Chief Executive Officer Joseph “Jay” Hooley said in a statement.
Average hourly earnings were $22.75 in November from $22.74 in the prior month, today’s report showed.
Government payrolls decreased by 11,000. State and local governments reduced employment by 13,000, while the federal government added 2,000 jobs.
New York City, facing a $3.3 billion deficit in next year’s budget, will cut its workforce by more than 10,000 over the next year-and-a-half, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s budget office said Nov. 18. More than 6,200 workers will be fired, and the remainder of the cuts will be made through attrition, his office said.
The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.
Work Week
The average work week for all workers held at 34.3 hours.
The so-called underemployment rate -- which includes part- time workers who’d prefer a full-time position and people who want work but have given up looking -- held at 17 percent.
“The labor market is capping off a very poor recovery this year,” said Guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia. “I don’t think we’ll slide back into job losses, but being stuck in neutral isn’t good. While consumer spending has normalized, employers are uncertain about demand going into 2011.”
Read more at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-03/u-s-added-39-000-jobs-in-november-unemployment-rose-to-9-8-.htmlEmployers added fewer jobs than forecast in November and the unemployment rate... more
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Details from John William’s Shadow Stats:
The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.
The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.
READ MORE: http://globalpoliticalawakening.blogspot.com/2010/11/real-unemployment-rate-is-22.htmlDetails from John William’s Shadow Stats:
The seasonally-adjusted SGS... more
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by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
A new study about the effects of immigration on U.S. employment supports the long-standing arguments of immigration advocates: Rather than displacing American workers, immigrant labor actually makes our economy stronger. Kevin Drum has the details at Mother Jones.
Now, with reports that undocumented laborers are a mainstay of disaster relief efforts all over the country, Americans are beginning to get a sense of the unsavory work relegated to many immigrants, and the high price immigrants pay for the simple privilege of employment.
Undocumented workers driving wages up
Going back to Mother Jones, new research examining the relationship between immigration and U.S. employment found that—contrary to conventional anti-immigrant wisdom—immigration does not negatively affect American employment. Instead, immigration drives wages up by pushing low-wage American workers into higher-paying jobs.
Here’s how it works: As less-educated immigrants gravitate towards work that requires fewer English language skills (like manual labor), their less-educated American counterparts move on to higher-paying, communications-intensive work that capitalizes on their comparatively better English language skills. This naturally drives wages up, and makes for a more productive economy overall.
The irony, as Drum notes, is that those who complain about immigrants stealing American jobs are the same people who want immigrants to learn English and assimilate as quickly as possible. “If they did,” Drum argues, “then they’d just start competing for the higher paying jobs that natives now monopolize.”
Stiffed in New Orleans
The reality of being an undocumented worker in the U.S. is starker than most Americans realize. Not only are immigrants doing work that most would rather not, they are also often cleaning up the messes that Americans leave behind.
Five years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, undocumented laborers remain a key component of reconstruction efforts. Initially drawn to the city by the prospect of work and the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to suspend employment immigration enforcement, many undocumented laborers relocated to New Orleans to assist with rebuilding. But, as Elise Foley reports at the Washington Independent, their immigration status renders them especially vulnerable to rampant wage theft, threats of deportation and workplace violence.
The situation is so dire for many workers that numerous nonprofit groups have initiated projects in the city and are calling for legislation to combat the problem. However, a key concern is that rising anti-immigrant sentiment in other parts of the U.S. could exacerbate difficulties in New Orleans. If such sentiment results in even greater labor abuses or renewed immigration enforcement, whole communities of people who have been dedicated to rebuilding the city could find themselves without livelihood, or even be displaced.
Exploited undocumented workers clean up oil spills
Given the reality that undocumented workers are charged with some of the dirtiest and most unsafe work American employers have to offer, it shouldn’t be surprising that U.S. companies rely on immigrant labor to clean up their worst messes. Not only do undocumented workers have fewer employment options, their immigration status renders them far less likely to report unsafe working conditions, exposure to hazardous materials, and underpayment—making them especially attractive to employers looking to save money or hide bad behavior.
So, naturally, undocumented workers were called in to deal with the catastrophic BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (though their compliance only earned them the undue attention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and, more recently, an oil spill in Michigan.
As Todd A. Heywood at the Michigan Messenger reports, one company in particular has come under fire for hiring and then exploiting undocumented laborers. Hallmark Industrial, a Texas contractor hired to clean up the oil spill, allegedly paid its workers only $800 for up to 100 hours of work per week. Additionally, the company subjected them to unsafe and hazardous working conditions, and even failed to provide workers with on-site toilets—forcing workers to relieve themselves in the areas they were charged with cleaning.
Just 24 hours after the Michigan Messenger broke the story, Hallmark Industrial was fired from the oil spill clean up, its contract terminated by the company which hired it, Garner Environmental Services, Inc. Whether that’s a victory is questionable. Following the termination of the contract, 40 undocumented workers were arrested in Texas, on a bus chartered by Hallmark—presumably just returned from Michigan. While the termination of the contract ensures that its workers won’t be subjected to further workplace abuses, it also ensures that those same individuals must begin the difficult task of finding similar work elsewhere.
Unemployed in California labor camps
Clearly, despite an inexorable willingness to perform low-wage manual labor, undocumented workers are not impervious to the unemployment epidemic. In U.S. labor camps—where migrant agricultural workers can find seasonal or even long term lodging near ranches—farm work is increasingly harder to come by.
As David Bacon highlights at New America Media, both undocumented immigrants and legal “guest workers” are adversely affected by the recession. While the latter possess work visas and may therefore stay in the country legally, both groups live together in the same labor camps, where they remain, ironically, unemployed. Given the present economic climate, there isn’t enough work for even the lowest-wage workers. And in spite of their legal status, even guest workers are barred from applying for unemployment benefits.
The recession has cast both undocumented and legally sanctioned agricultural workers into circumstances even more dismal than those advertised by UFW when it launched its “Take Our Jobs” campaign earlier this summer. Outlining the long hours, low pay, and back-breaking labor associated with farm work, UFW satirically invited American citizens to replace the scores of overworked and undocumented laborers that keep our agricultural industry afloat.
Though meant to be a tongue-in-cheek response to the misconception that immigrants steal American jobs, the campaign exposes a real, if unfortunate, truth about undocumented workers: Even as their presence drives Americans into higher paying jobs, Americans employers are all too happy to subject the undocumented to the worst indignities.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
A new study about the effects of... more
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by Zach Carter, Media Consortium Blogger
After months of modest gains, the U.S. economy lost 125,000 jobs during June. That’s the worst jobs-related news this year. Without serious action soon, the struggling U.S. economy is going to get even uglier. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama’s economic team was slow to recognize the severity of the jobs crisis, and now seems unable to get Congress to actually do something about it.
As David Corn notes for Mother Jones, the recent jobs data is actually much worse than the 125,000 figure implies:
“The economy needs about 150,000 new jobs a month to keep up with population growth and new entries into the jobs market. It needs a lot more than that to make up for the 8 million or so jobs lost in 2008 and 2009.”
Recession 2.0
Although the economy sluggishly recovered from the catastrophic events of late 2008, economists are warning of a “double-dip” recession in which mass layoffs return. So why is Congress refusing to deal with the jobs crisis in the face of such terrible economic conditions?
Part of the problem, Corn notes, is that Obama didn’t do a very good job selling his economic stimulus package to the public. The bill, which Obama pushed through in early 2009, really did improve the economy—it’s the only reason why the unemployment rate is hovering around 10 percent instead of 12 percent or 13 percent. But by refusing to counter Republican attacks on so-called “wasteful spending” included in the package, Obama failed to show the public how much good the stimulus has done. Instead, the bill is widely perceived as another wasteful giveaway to special interests and akin to the bank bailout.
Spending is stimulus
In reality, government spending is the best way to stimulate the economy during a deep recession. It makes up for the shortfall in spending from consumers who have lost their jobs.
There are all kinds of ways the federal government can spend money to create jobs, including extending unemployment benefits to laid-off workers, providing funding to states to allow them to hire more teachers and cops, and hiring people to build roads and buildings. The government did all of these things with the stimulus package from early 2009, but it didn’t do enough of any of them. The stimulus package was simply spread to thin.
Roots of recession
As Robert Reich explains for The Nation, the recession itself was created by deep economic inequality. By 2007, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans made 23.5 percent of the nation’s total income. Figures like that had not been seen since 1929, when the richest 1 percent made 23.9 percent of the nation’s total wealth. All of this concentration at the top means that the elite enjoy a disproportionate share of economic gains, but it also sets the entire economy up for massive shocks.
When the rich have all of that money, they have to invest it somewhere. When the majority of citizens are seeing sluggish wage growth, or even a drop in wages, as the U.S. experienced during the Bush years, there aren’t enough valuable assets out there that can absorb that investment. As a result, rich people put their money in speculative asset bubbles. When those bubbles burst, the entire economy can come crashing down, as it did in both 1929 and 2008.
Rampant inequalities around the globe
As Melinda Burns highlights for AlterNet, rampant inequality in not unique to the U.S. More than half of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day, and decades of conservative economic policies have been unable to reverse that hardship.
One of the best ways to relieve global poverty is also one of the most intuitive—give money to the poor. Brazil has made an aggressive push to cope with widespread poverty by providing $31 billion in pensions and grants to the poor every year. As a result, the nation’s poverty rate has declined from 28 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2008, while child malnutrition was cut in half. These policies make good economic sense. When poor people have money to spend, they spend it and fuel growth that benefits the entire economy.
Social insecurity
And yet in the U.S., Obama is seriously considering cutting Social Security in order to reduce the federal budget deficit. As Margaret Smith emphasizes for In These Times, Obama has created a bipartisan “debt commission,” and packed it full of ideologues from both political parties who have been fighting for years to slash Social Security.
This doesn’t really make sense, because Social Security is funded by its own dedicated tax revenue, and is sitting on a multi-trillion-dollar surplus created by those taxes. It really can’t do much to reduce the deficit. With interest rates at record lows, lawmakers do not currently have any reason to be worried about the deficit. But if they wanted to take action on it, they’d have to deal with long-term issues like the rising cost of health care, the bloated defense budget and absurdly low tax rates on the rich. Cutting off income for senior citizens won’t help.
Blocking economic stimulus won’t help
And neither will efforts to block short-term economic stimulus. But Obama’s emphasis on the budget deficit plays into the hands of Congressional opportunists who want to block his economic recovery efforts. If we’re told over and over again that the real economic problem is the budget deficit, no money is going to be dedicated to problems like jobs—even if that money would actually help the government’s fiscal position by fueling economic growth.
The American economy is in the middle of an absolute employment crisis. Without strong federal action, it’s going to get worse.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Zach Carter, Media Consortium Blogger
After months of modest gains, the U.S.... more
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by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Two critical Wall Street reforms, once declared dead by U.S. megabanks, are suddenly close to Congressional approval. As the House and Senate iron out the differences between their financial overhauls, it now appears that lawmakers are finally willing to ban banks from gambling with taxpayer money by implementing a strong Volcker Rule, and to end taxpayer subsidies for risky derivatives operations.
These reforms will help stabilize the U.S. economy by clamping down on the naked speculation the drove financial markets off a cliff in 2008. But while lawmakers are finally waking up to the economic and political necessity of strong Wall Street reforms, conservatives have blocked key efforts to ease unemployment. President Barack Obama also appears ready to surrender to an assault on Social Security later this year.
Derivative of what?
Lawmakers now have the political momentum to end taxpayer subsidies for the trading of derivatives, as I emphasize for AlterNet. These risky businesses helped sink big banks and jeopardize the broader economy in 2008. These reforms would be a giant step towards reclaiming the U.S. economy for ordinary citizens, and they would fly in the face of opposition from both Wall Street and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
Derivatives are the infamous financial weapons of mass destruction that brought down AIG and Enron. Many of the biggest scandals arising from the current financial crisis were derivatives operations, from Lehman Brothers’ accounting gimmicks to the SEC’s fraud suit against Goldman Sachs. By allowing traditional commercial banks to sell derivatives, the U.S. government actually subsidizes the entire market, encouraging speculation and ramping up risks across the economy.
Wall Street’s political clout stems from its derivatives machinations and its “proprietary trading,” otherwise known as gambling for their own accounts. Both provide big, easy profits that banks convert to bonuses, lobbying and political contributions.
Ending the subsidies for derivatives, and implementing a strong Volcker Rule to ban outright bank gambling would be the first major blow to Wall Street’s total dominance on economic policy, one with lasting implications for the enforcement of other new regulations, including stronger protections for consumers.
Debtors’ Prisons
Plenty of economic battles will remain after this year’s Congressional contest over Wall Street. As Annie Lowrey emphasizes for The Washington Independent, authorities in several states are actually throwing people in jail for failing to pay off credit cards and other debts. Lowrey highlights a story and study by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune which reveals that, as the recession has deepened, judges have been ramping up arrest warrants for people who don’t pay their debts. In Minnesota alone, 845 people were arrested for being in debt in 2009, up 60 percent from four years ago.
As Lowrey notes, it’s not a crime to be in debt or fail to pay it off. But debt collection agencies have still been able to persuade judges to put borrowers behind bars until they make minimum payments. This is a total abuse of the justice system and a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Sometimes borrowers just can’t pay—that’s the dominant risk involved in banking, and being able to figure out who can pay and who can’t is the job of a banker, not a police officer. Debt collectors, by contrast, purchase debts at a discount, precisely because it is unlikely that borrowers will be able to pony up. If they can’t, that isn’t the business of a criminal court. It’s the risk inherent in a business model based on scavenging.
Slashing Social Security
Other items on the economic policy agenda are looking similarly ominous. As Robert Kuttner emphasizes for The American Prospect, Wall Street tycoon Pete Peterson appears to have found an ally in the Obama administration for his lifelong quest to slash Social Security. The plan is to pull back support for seniors in the name of balanced budgets. These cuts will be totally counterproductive economically, as would the corresponding middle-class tax hike and domestic spending freeze that Peterson is pushing for.
The real fight over Social Security is still a few months away, but as GRITtv’s Laura Flanders notes in an interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), deficit hysteria has already infiltrated contemporary policies. Republicans and conservative Democrats are using the deficit as an excuse to deny people the most basic social services, like unemployment benefits and health care payment assistance for the unemployed.
More on the deficit “problem”
As the editors of The Nation note, there is no short-term U.S. budget deficit problem. Interest rates on U.S. Treasury bonds are at record lows. Anybody who claims to be worried about the deficit is really worried about the longer-term implications, and those longer-term issues have big-picture, long-term solutions.
The single most critical variable in budget calculations in the increasing rate of health care costs, but the bloated defense budget and low tax rates for big corporations and wealthy individuals are also a target. Skimping on unemployment benefits, or refusing federal aid to hire teachers and cops doesn’t help those long-term issues one bit.
Cutting government spending and social services during a recession seriously threatens economic recovery. When everybody is broke, the government is the only reliable source for the spending needed to support growth and employment, and it has to keep spending until things really turn around. Obama’s 2009 stimulus kept the unemployment rate from reaching 12 percent or 13 percent, but it was just too small to really turn the economy around. With unemployment at 10 percent, we need more federal support for jobs, not less.
The recent progress on Wall Street reform shows that Congress finally understands that they need votes more than campaign contributions. Lawmakers who leaves those citizens out to dry by refusing to back a jobs bill or allowing unemployment benefits to expire will be in trouble come November.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Two critical Wall Street reforms, once... more
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There is one factor quietly lurking in the background that has been impacting the markets more than you might think this past month, writes YPNation contributor Nick Wychocki.
Read more: http://www.ypnation.net/recent-market-pull-backThere is one factor quietly lurking in the background that has been impacting the... more
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he job market is improving, but one statistic presents a stark reminder of the challenges that remain: Nearly half of the unemployed—45.9%—have been out of work longer than six months, more than at any time since the Labor Department began keeping track in 1948.
Even in the worst months of the early 1980s, when the jobless rate topped 10% for months on end, only about one in four of the unemployed was out of work for more than six months.
Overall, seven million Americans have been looking for work for 27 weeks or more, and most of them—4.7 million—have been out of work for a year or more.
Long-term unemployment has reached nearly every segment of the population, but some have been particularly hard-hit. The typical long-term unemployed worker is a white man with a high-school education or less. Older unemployed workers also tend to be out of work longer. Those between ages 65 and 69 who still wish to work have typically been jobless for 49.8 weeks.
The effects of long-term unemployment are likely to linger when the overall jobless rate falls toward normal, threatening to create a pool of nearly permanently unemployed workers, a condition once more common in Europe than in the U.S.
"The consequences are worse for those who can't find a job quickly," said Till Marco von Wachter, a Columbia University economist. They extend from atrophying skills to a higher likelihood of unhappiness and anxiety. Workers out of work for a long time tend to find it more difficult to find a job, and "the longer people are unemployed the more likely they are to eventually give up searching and thereby drop out of the labor force," Mr. von Wachter said.
The typical unemployed worker, regardless of occupation, had been unemployed for a seasonally adjusted 21.6 weeks as of April. Because of the deep recession, Congress extended jobless benefits to a maximum of 99 weeks in states with high unemployment. Those extended benefits will expire if Congress doesn't act; the Labor Department estimates that 19,000 jobless workers could start losing benefits in the first week of June. The House has voted to extend the benefits; the Senate hasn't yet.
While blue-collar and construction workers have been battered by the recession, they aren't the only ones hit. Unemployed production workers, including toolmakers, woodworkers and food processors, have been out of work for a median of 38.1 weeks. Unemployed workers whose most recent job was in management, business and financial operations have typically been out of work for 32.3 weeks.
Richard Moran of Ortonville, Mich., the state with the highest U.S. unemployment rate, hasn't had a job for two-and-a-half years. The 57-year-old, who was laid off from a testing and design job for Chrysler Group LLC, suspects his age is working against him.
Mr. Moran has attended two free training programs. The first, to become a corrections officer, ended at roughly the same time that Michigan was closing prisons amid tightening budgets. He recently finished an auto-parts design course to refresh his skills. "The certificates are piling up," said Mr. Moran, who also has a four-year college degree in mass communications.
While education is helpful, college graduates have also fallen into the ranks of the long-term unemployed. They represent 15.9% of the long-term jobless, compared with 14.9% of all unemployed workers. Those with high school degrees who haven't been to college comprise 40.7% of long-term unemployed, compared with 37.8% of all unemployed workers.
Mr. Moran's wife earns a good salary at Baker College so the couple has been able to keep up on the mortgage and other bills, but they have cut back on extras. Meanwhile, their 19-year-old daughter snagged two jobs at a nearby mall. "It's very depressing when your daughter's got two jobs, your wife's got a good job, and you can't find anything," he said.
Mr. Moran said he feared the shame and anxiety of long-term unemployment would overwhelm him. He grew depressed and withdrawn before discovering free therapy sessions at a nearby college, which he now attends in addition to taking antianxiety medication. "It seems like no matter what I do, it fizzles," he said. "But there's always a hope."he job market is improving, but one statistic presents a stark reminder of the... more
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by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Image courtesy of Flickr user clementine gallot, via Creative Commons LicenseThe job market in its worst state since the Great Depression and is putting tremendous strain on millions of Americans. Without action from Washington, D.C., the unemployment rate will remain elevated for years to come, and almost certainly above 9 percent through the end of 2010. Public esteem for economic policymakers isn’t doing so hot either. There are several simple steps that President Barack Obama and Congress could take to create jobs, but of late, neither have shown much interest in doing so.
Jobs matter
As Tim Fernholz emphasizes for The American Prospect, one of the best opportunities to repair the job market is a piece of legislation authored by Rep. George Miller (D-CA). The bill’s strategy is straightforward: Local governments pinched by the recession can apply for federal funds to ensure that teachers, cops, and other public servants are not laid off in the name of balanced budgets. Local governments that have already let employees go could apply for funding to re-hire them.
The result would be a clear win for the economy. Miller estimates that his bill could create 750,000 jobs, while the Economic Policy Institute expects the bill could create as many as 945,000. It’s also a smart political move—Obama’s political adversaries would no doubt find some way to criticize the move (they invented death panels for health care, after all), but as Fernholz notes, voters care much more about getting back to work than they do about ideological warfare or abstract bloviations about the federal budget deficit.
The deficit vs. jobs
And the federal budget deficit is no excuse for inaction on jobs. In the middle of a recession, providing funding for jobs can ultimately be deficit-reducing. More people working means more people buying goods and services. That means higher tax receipts for the government on a variety of fronts.
The deficit only matters if it is so severe that investors are skittish about lending money to the government. We would see this nervousness in the interest rates on U.S. Treasury bonds—the rate would be very high, as investors demanded a high return for the risk they were taking on. But in fact, interest rates are very low—the interest rate on 30-year bonds is currently just over 4 percent, while it frequently eclipsed 9 percent during the presidency of George H. W. Bush.
War doesn’t improve the economy
But if lawmakers wanted to take action on the deficit, there is no reason why they should do so at the expense of jobs. Congress just approved an additional $60 billion in funding for the war in Afghanistan, while refusing to provide a $28 billion for teachers in the name of deficit reduction. Congress has officially spent $1 trillion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as Robert Greenwald notes for AlterNet, wars which have done little to improve either U.S. economic or foreign policy goals:
These wars aren’t making us safer. They aren’t worth the cost, and we don’t need them. What people do need are jobs and help when they don’t have enough work or any work at all. But instead of leading on the jobs issue, they’re delaying and dissembling about the cost– while spending trillions on war.
Indeed, the failure of Congress to take action on jobs before its Memorial Day recess means that over one million Americans will stop receiving unemployment benefits within a month’s time.
Tax time
As Art Levine emphasizes for Working In These Times, spending is only half of the budget equation. The other half is revenues, which means taxes. There are all kinds of ways that the government could responsibly raise taxes and use that money to create jobs. One political no-brainer would be requiring hedge fund mangers and private equity kingpins to pay taxes at the same rates as those of other billionaires.
Thanks to a George W. Bush-era tax cut, these Wall Street titans are taxed at rates as low as 15 percent, dramatically lower than the 35 percent tax rate for rich people who make their millions in the form of salary rather than interest on investments. Levine also details a host of jobs initiatives that were ultimately axed in favor of concerns about the deficit.
Tax the speculators
As Sarah Anderson notes for Yes! Magazine, taxing financial speculation itself could help give our economy a double jolt. By taxing risky Wall Street gambling, the government could bring in billions to spend on jobs. If that tax discouraged Wall Street traders from engaging in risky gambling, the lower levels of speculation would help insulate our economy from the kinds of shocks it received in the fall of 2008.
Come November, the top concern at the polling place will correspond closely to the top concerns of consumer pocketbooks. Tough economic times will mean losses for incumbents in both political parties, but the party that does the most to create jobs will do the most to curb its losses. It will also be pursuing responsible public policy, and advancing the well-being of its constituents.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Image courtesy of Flickr user clementine... more
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by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Last week, the U.S. Senate rejected a plan that would have broken up the nation’s six largest banks firms into firms that could fail without wreaking havoc on the economy. Even though the defeat reinforces Wall Street’s political dominance, there is still room for a handful of other useful reforms, like banning banks from gambling with taxpayer money and protecting consumers from banker abuses. After looting our houses, banks are now pushing for the ability to bet on movie box-office receipts, and will keep trying to financialize anything they can unless Congress acts.
Wall Street calls the shots
Writing for The Nation, John Nichols details last week’s Capitol Hill damage. Today’s financial oligarchy, in which a handful of bigwig bankers and their lobbyists are able to write regulations and evade rules they don’t like, will still be in place after the Wall Street reform bill is passed. The lesson is clear, as Nichols notes:
Whatever the final form of federal financial services reform legislation, one thing is now certain: The biggest of the big banks will still be calling the shots.
Still worth fighting for
As I emphasize for AlterNet, Congress has made a terrible mistake here, but there is still room for reform. It took President Franklin Delano Roosevelt seven years to enact his New Deal banking laws. It took even longer to reshape public opinion of monopolies when President Theodore Roosevelt took on Corporate America in the early 1900s.
What’s still worth fighting for? We have to curb the derivatives market—the multi-trillion-dollar casino that destroyed AIG. We have to impose a strong version of the Volcker Rule, which would ban banks from engaging in speculative trading for their own accounts. We have to change the way the Federal Reserve does business and force the government’s most secretive bailout engine to operate in the open. And we have to establish a strong, independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency to ensure that the horrific subprime mortgage abuses are not repeated.
As Nomi Prins details for The American Prospect, the current reform bill will not effectively deal with the dangers posed by hedge funds and private equity firms—companies that partnered with banks to blow up the economy through investments in subprime mortgages. That means that whatever happens with the current bill, Congress must again take action next year to rein in other financial sector excesses.
The derivatives casino at the movies
As Nick Baumann demonstrates for Mother Jones, banks are doing everything they can to gobble up other productive elements of the economy. The economy crashed in 2008 in large part because banks had used the derivatives market to place trillions of dollars in speculative bets on the housing market. This wasn’t lending, it was pure gambling: Instead of using poker chips, bankers placed their bets with derivatives. But, as Baumann emphasizes, banks are now looking to expand the sort of thing they can make derivatives gambles with. The latest proposal is to allow banks to bet on the box office success of movies. That’s right, banks would be gambling on movies.
Hollywood may be shallow, but it isn’t stupid. It doesn’t want to see the banking industry repeat its destructive looting of the housing industry on the movie business, and is pushing hard to ban banks from betting on movies. But we can’t count on every industry having a powerful lobby group to counter every assault from the banking system.
Taking stock in schools
Consider the unsettling report by Juan Gonzales of Democracy Now!. Gonzales details how big banks gamed the charter school system to score huge profits while simultaneously saddling taxpayers with massive debts that make teaching kids supremely difficult. By exploiting multiple federal tax credits, banks that invest in charter schools have been able to double their money in seven years—no small feat in the investing world—while schools have seen their rents skyrocket. One school in Albany, N.Y. saw its rent jump from $170,000 to $500,000 in a single year.
About that unemployment rate…
It’s not like public schools are flush with cash right now. The $330,000 increase in rent could pay the salaries of more than a few teachers. As the recession sparked by big bank excess grinds on, even the good news is pretty hard to swallow. As David Moberg emphasizes for Working In These Times, the economy added 290,000 jobs in April, but the unemployment rate actually climbed from 9.7 percent to 9.9 percent in March. That’s because the unemployment rate only counts workers who are actively seeking a job—if you want a job but haven’t found one for so long that you give up, you’re not technically “unemployed.” All of those “new” workers are driving the official figures up.
In other words, it’s still rough out there. And likely to stay rough as state governments try to deal with the lost tax revenue from plunging home values and mass layoffs. Nearly half of all unemployed people in the U.S. have been out of a job for six months or more. And while we’d be much worse off without Obama’s economic stimulus package, that percentage is likely to grow this year, Moberg notes.
This is what unrestrained banking behemoths do. They book big profits and bonuses for themselves, regardless of the consequences for the rest of the economy. Congress absolutely must impose serious financial reform this year. After the November election, breaking up the banks must once again be on the agenda when Congress considers the future fate of hedge funds, private equity firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. If we don’t rein in Wall Street, banks will continue to wreak havoc on our homes, our jobs and even our schools. Congress must act.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Last week, the U.S. Senate rejected a plan... more
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by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Congress returns from its April recess this week with financial reform at the top of its to-do list. With millions of Americans still bearing the brunt of the worst recession in 80 years, Congress needs to start protecting our economy from Wall Street excess, and repair the shredded social safety net that has allowed the Great Recession to exact a devastating human cost.
Big banks are an economic parasite
In an excellent multi-part interview with Paul Jay of The Real News, former bank regulator William Black explains how the financial industry has transformed itself into an economic parasite. Black explains that banks are supposed to serve as a sort of economic catalyst—financing productive businesses and fueling economic growth. This was largely how banks operated for several decades after the Great Depression, because regulations had ensured that banks had incentives to do useful things, and barred them from taking crazy risks.
The deregulatory movement of the past thirty years destroyed those incentives, allowing banks to book big profits by essentially devouring other parts of the economy. Instead of fueling productive growth, banks were actively assaulting the broader economy for profit. None of that subprime lending served any economic purpose. Neither do the absurd credit card fees banks charge, or the deceptive overdraft fees they continue to implement.
As Matt Taibbi explains in an interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales of Democracy Now!, banks didn’t just cannibalize consumers. They also went directly after local governments, bribing public officials to ink debt deals that worked wonderfully for the banks, and terribly for communities. In Jefferson County, Ala., J.P. Morgan Chase helped turn a $250 million sewer project into a $5 billion burden for taxpayers. The deal generated nothing of value for either citizens or the economy, but J.P. Morgan Chase was still able to line the pockets of its shareholders and executives. This kind of behavior was illegal, but the transactions involved were complex financial derivatives, which are not currently subject to regulation. To this day, nobody at J.P. Morgan Chase has been prosecuted for bribery or corruption.
Congress set to avoid tough regulations
There is a clear need for Congress to enact some firm restrictions against risky and predatory bank activities. But at the behest of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Congress is doing its best to avoid inserting any hard terms in legislative language, instead leaving the specifics to federal regulators to work out. As Tim Fernholz emphasizes for The American Prospect, this is an exercise in futility. Regulators already have the power to impose more stringent rules on nearly every arena of Wall Street business that matters (derivatives are a very noteworthy exception). If they wanted to fix things, they could do it without Congressional help. The trouble is, the financial sector has polluted most of the regulatory agencies, so that many regulators now act more like lobbyists for the banks they regulate, rather than law enforcers. Indeed, as I note for AlterNet, the top bank regulator in the U.S. spent over a decade lobbying for the nation’s largest banks before taking up his current job. If Congress doesn’t establish firm rules, regulators under future administrations would be free to simply undo any measures that the current agencies actually implement.
Megabanks equal mega risks
As Stacy Mitchell illustrates for Yes! Magazine, most of the problems in the financial sector are connected to the size of our banking behemoths. Big banks have enormous power—if they fail, the economy goes off a cliff. As a result, any responsible government wouldn’t allow any of our megabanks to actually fail. But knowing that the government will protect them from any true catastrophes, big banks take bigger risks—if the risk pays off, they get rich, if it backfires, taxpayers will suck it up. That puts the interests of big banks at odds with the public interest, and creates an economy where bankers don’t try to finance useful projects with a safe and steady return, but instead back crazy bets that just might pay off.
You can’t fix that problem with regulations or idle threats of taking down a big bank when it gets itself in trouble—the markets won’t believe it, and the banks will still take risks. The only solution, Mitchell notes, is to break up the banks into smaller institutions that can fail without wreaking havoc on the economy.
Economic inequality weakening the economy
All of this ties into rampant economic inequality in the United States. Since the 1970s, conservatives have waged a constant battle on the social safety net, shredding protections for ordinary people, while empowering corporate executives to take advantage of them. In an illuminating blog post for Mother Jones, Kevin Drum highlights the fact that average income has only rose from about $20 an hour in 1972 to $23 an hour today. This isn’t because workers were slacking off—productivity has increased at roughly five times that rate. In other words, nearly all of the economic gains since the Nixon era have accrued to the wealthy.
When people don’t have access to strong and improving income, they finance things with credit. But if wages never actually improve, that debt becomes a significant burden. When an entire society finds itself overly indebted, people stop buying things, and the economy tanks. The predation in the American financial sector makes this problem even worse.
But political theatrics are even trumping efforts to provide relief to those hit hardest by the recession. Sens. Jim Bunning (R-KY) and Tom Coburn (R-NE) have blocked the extension of unemployment benefits twice in the past month. As Kai Wright emphasizes for ColorLines, that recklessness puts up to 400,000 Americans at risk of losing their unemployment checks. That’s a human tragedy—hundreds of thousands of people will have no way to pay the bills. It’s also bad for business, since those people won’t have any money to buy things that businesses produce. It is, in short, short-sighted economic insanity.
The economy is supposed to work for everybody, not just the rich, not just bankers. For that to happen, politicians have to establish meaningful regulations to make sure finance works for the greater good– and safety nets to make sure that anyone who falls through the cracks doesn’t see her life prospects permanently diminished.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Congress returns from its April recess... more
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by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Next week, the debate over financial reform will begin in earnest when Congress returns from its Easter break. Both political parties are gearing up for a major fight, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. An out-of-control banking sector has cost the economy over 7 million jobs since 2007, and without major reforms, Wall Street could repeat this disaster in just a few years’ time. But thanks to Wall Street’s lobbying might, all of the necessary reforms are currently in jeopardy.
Key Reforms
Writing for The Nation, Christopher Hayes offers a useful primer on financial regulation, highlighting three reforms that are crucial to any bill.
* With no effective regulation of consumer protection issues for years, the existing banking regulators were more focused on preserving bank profitability than on going to bat for ordinary citizens. If banks could make big profits with unfair gimmicks (or even fraud), regulators usually looked the other way. The solution is a strong, independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) charged with nothing but protecting consumers from banker abuses, an agency with the broad authority to both write rules and enforce them.
* We need to rein in the $300 trillion market for derivatives, the complex financial contracts brought down AIG. Unlike ordinary stocks and bonds, derivatives are not traded on exchanges, so nobody really knows what is going on in this tremendous market. When something goes wrong, like with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, nobody can tell who the problem will effect. Without information, markets panic, and the entire financial system can collapse within a matter of days. Fortunately, this problem has a simple solution: require all derivatives to be traded on exchanges.
* Too-big-to-fail is too big to exist. The U.S. has never had banks as large as those that exist today, and their size gives them enormous political clout. It’s part of the reason why regulators didn’t make banks obey consumer protection laws, and why banks have been so effective in derailing reform. It’s been almost two years since the Big Crash, yet we are still wrangling over reform because giant banks deploy giant lobbying teams, and have almost unlimited resources to devote to their lobbying efforts. If we can’t scale back the banks’ power by breaking them up into smaller institutions, it’s unlikely that other reforms will be effective.
As Margaret Dorfman emphasizes for American Forum, a strong CFPA would help protect small businesses, since a huge proportion of them are financed with credit cards and home equity loans (Dorfman is CEO of the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce, an advocacy group for women that should not be confused with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—a nasty lobbying front for a few hundred high-flying executives). As Dorfman notes, small businesses are where most new jobs come from– if a regulator can ensure that these businesses are not pushed around by abusive banks, they can help repair our jobs.
Unfortunately, all three reforms are in real jeopardy as the bill moves to the Senate floor for a vote, as Simon Johnson notes in his Baseline Scenario blog carried at AlterNet. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) hasn’t included any language on breaking up the banks, he has significantly watered down the CFPA proposal President Obama put forward, and derivatives reform was almost entirely gutted in the House.
What’s at stake
So what’s at stake? For some perspective, consider last week’s jobs report. As Steve Benen notes for The Washington Monthly, the U.S. economy added 160,000 jobs in March, the first significant monthly gain since the start of the recession, and the best jobs report in three years. But while it’s good to see the economy actually adding jobs, at the March rate, it would take more than three-and-a-half years to win back the 7 million jobs lost since 2007.
This jobs disaster was not caused by faceless and unpreventable forces—it was the direct result of a reckless and unregulated banking system. Without major reforms, banks will always have this economic leverage when that recklessness overpowers them: bail us out, or watch your economy collapse.
This is an issue of basic democratic fairness, as Noam Chomsky explains for In These Times. Wall Street has purchased the right to bend public policy to anything that benefits banks—the rest of society is not their concern. The bailouts of 2008 and 2009 make that clear. After wrecking the economy to enrich themselves, bank executives then looted the public coffers with the threat of still further economic havoc.
And the political clout of America’s largest banks insulates them from criticism when they profit from abuses—particularly when those activities don’t spark wider economic crises. As Andy Kroll highlights for Mother Jones, J.P. Morgan Chase is currently making a killing by financing mountaintop removal mining (MTR). MTR is an ecological nightmare—literally a bombing campaign in which entire mountains in Appalachia are destroyed to make way for cheap coal. That’s meant billions in profits for J.P. Morgan, and an environmental catastrophe for the United States.
Obama and Congress have a choice. They can play financial reform for campaign contributions, pushing a watered-down bill that will function as a set of reforms-in-name-only. Alternatively, they can do their jobs, confront a dangerous financial oligarchy head-on, and help build an economy that works for everyone.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Next week, the debate over financial... more
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